The present invention relates to a wireless communication terminal, for handling location independent short messages, and a method for handling location independent short messages in a wireless communication terminal.
The use of wireless communication terminals, e.g., cellular phones, is increasing enormously today. The need for using more sophisticated functions, on these kinds of terminals, is also increasing. One of these functions may be sending and/or receiving short messages by using Short Message Services (SMS). Other functions may be receiving/sending data calls.
When receiving/sending several SMS messages it might cause some problems to handle these messages. For example, a user may receive a lot of SMS messages which are not very important to the user, and perhaps only one SMS message which is very important for the user. Thus, it might be difficult to sort out all the less important messages first before finding the most important messages. Also, if the user has sent a lot of messages to different receivers, and the user needs to see if he has sent a message to a particular receiver or not, it will be difficult to find this message if there are several sent messages stored/placed after each other. Therefore, there is a need to handle SMS messages in a more efficient way, in order to find short messages more easily.
The NOKIA 9000 Communicator is provided with a special SMS directory, which makes it possible for the user to create own directories, A directory is a folder which the user may store/place, and organize the messages in. Thus, the folders will facilitate the handling of SMS messages. Also, upon receiving an SMS message the message will automatically go in to one message folder for received messages.
Another way of handling messages. by using group folders, is software programs for electronic mails, so called e-mails. Programs which can handle this kind of messages are e.g. Netscape Mail, provided in Netscape Navigator(trademark) Version 3.01, and Internet mail, provided in Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 3.02. Further, in Internet Mail it is possible to define the user settings in a way so that an electronic mail is automatically sorted into a folder, upon receiving the electronic mail. This may be done by defining one or more parameters in the program, which shall be fulfilled when sorting the received electronic mail into a specified folder. One parameter may for example be the sender""s address of the received mail. Another parameter can be messages comprising a particular subject.
What have been discussed above is only relating to location independent SMS, like Point-to-Point (PP) Short Message Service (SMS) messages. which is defined in GSM 04.11 version 6.0.1 by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). The present invention also relates PP SMS, not only for Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) but also for other types of cellular systems using PP SMS, like Digital-American Mobile Phone Service (D-AMPS), Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT), etc.
EP-A2-0,752,793 discloses a way to handle broadcast messages, which gives a user who has the possibility to receive an SMS broadcast message, an ability to specify what type of SMS broadcast message he/she is interested in receiving. Also, the user can selectively enable and disable the reception of these broadcast messages, and has an ability to control the storage and display of broadcast messages. The handling of the display of broadcast messages, is done by enabling the user to select a category and display a list of the broadcast:messages in a selected category. This is a very nice feature, which is regarding so called SMS broadcast messages. EP-A2-0,752,793 gives examples of how this invention can be used in particular for TDMA (time division multiple access). In GSM, which is also based on TDMA, the SMS cell broadcast is defined in GSM 4.12 version 5.0.2 by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).
However, even if the SMS broadcast feature in EP-A2-0,752,793 is very useful, it does not support the use of PP SMS. Also, the user has very limited ways of control SMS broadcast messages, since this is usually defined by the operator of the cellular network. Upon, reception of an SMS broadcast message, the user normally gets a separate indication saying that this is an SMS broadcast message. To read the SMS broadcast message, the user can enter a special menu for reading the message. The SMS broadcast messages are dependant on the location of the receiver (user), i.e., the user can only receive SMS broadcast messages when he is connected to a cell which is dedicated to send out this type of messages. Thus, there is a great difference between PP SMS and SMS broadcast, since PP SMS is not dependant on the geographical location of the user. Also, the sender of a PP SMS message has to specify an address to the receiver. This is not necessary for broadcast messages, since the sender sends the broadcast message to all receivers in a particular geographical area, i.e., the receiver is not specified beforehand. For example, the user today can only receive his PP SMS messages into one single folder, on his/her wireless communication terminal. This means that it can be very difficult to monitor the different types of PP SMS messages, e.g., if you receive some private messages at work and vice versa. Hence, there is a need for handling PP SMS messages more efficiently.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to facilitate and improve the handling of location independent short messages, like Point-to-Point SMS messages, in a wireless communication terminal, upon receiving/sending messages.
This object is achieved in accordance with the present invention by a wireless communication terminal for handling location independent short messages, preferably Point-to-Point short messages, said terminal comprising control means for handling receiving and/or transmitting a location independent short message over a cellular communication network, said short message comprising identification means, display means for presenting location independent short messages to a user of the terminal, and a message folder to place and/or store location independent short messages in, said folder being provided on said display means, wherein said message folder is provided with sorting means to select location independent short messages upon receiving or sending a location independent short message, said sorting means comprising at least one parameter defining a category of location independent short messages, and will automatically sort a message into said folder when the identification means in the location independent short message corresponds to said parameter, and wherein the terminal is provided with a Calling Line Identification (CLI), identifying a transmitter of a location independent short message.
One particular advantage, provided by the present invention, is that it will be possible to sort received/sent location independent short messages automatically in a message folder, when the folder recognizes, e.g., the number of the receiver/sender. This means that the user of a location independent short messages in a wireless communication terminal can specify messages to be sorted in a personalized way.
Further advantages of the method and the wireless communication terminal according to the present invention will be apparent from the dependent claims.
Even if the NOKIA 9000 Communicator provides a very good solution to handle point-to-point SMS messages, there are some improvements which are desirable. For example, if you receive a lot of messages, and place/store them in the message folder, it might still be difficult and cause problems to sort out the most important ones, Also, the user has to organize all the received/sent messages by himself/herself, in order to find a message for later use. Embodiments of the present invention facilitate the handling of location independent short messages, like Point-to-Point SMS messages, in a wireless communication terminal, upon receiving/sending messages.